{"id":40089,"date":"2019-04-13T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/stars-blow-out-express-14-4-to-finish-regular-season\/"},"modified":"2019-04-15T11:29:42","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T18:29:42","slug":"stars-blow-out-express-14-4-to-finish-regular-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/stars-blow-out-express-14-4-to-finish-regular-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars earn playoff spot, face Sockers at ShoWare on Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tacoma Stars have clinched a berth in the Major Arena Soccer League Ron Newman Cup playoffs.<\/p>\n

The Kent-based Stars (12-12) open the playoffs against the Pacific Division champion San Diego Sockers (23-1). Kickoff is 7:35 p.m. Friday at the accesso ShoWare Center.<\/p>\n

Tacoma was the only team to beat San Diego during the regular season, a 5-4 decision on Dec. 22 at Pachanga Arena in San Diego. The Sockers eventually won the season series 4-1.<\/p>\n

Tickets go on sale Monday.<\/p>\n

Game 2 is at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 20 in San Diego (MASL TV<\/a>). If the series is tied, a deciding mini-game will immediately follow Game 2.<\/p>\n

The teams met in last season’s playoffs with the Sockers winning the series 2-1. The Stars beat San Diego 5-2 in the first game of that series.<\/p>\n

Last Friday night, the Stars stayed alive in the playoff hunt with a convincing 14-4 victory at the Turlock (Calif.) Express. Nick Perera and Vince McCuskey each had a hat trick for the Stars.<\/p>\n

The Stars jumped on the Express (3-21) from the beginning, racking up 11 unanswered goals, including four in the first quarter. Perera got things going for the Stars with an assist by Mike Ramos with 11:07 to play in the opening frame. The same pair teamed up again, with Ramos getting the goal just over two minutes later.<\/p>\n

McCluskey took a Dan Antoniuk pass and turned it into his first goal of the evening and a 3-0 lead with 2:58 remaining in the first quarter. Joseph Cairel finished the scoring spree, with a Ramos assist.<\/p>\n

McCluskey’s second goal of the night – assisted by Stars keeper Danny Waltman – pushed the lead to 5-0.<\/p>\n

Just over a minute later, it was Cairel’s turn to score his second of the game on Ramos’s third assist of the half and, with 11:01 to go in the first half, Tacoma went up 6-0.<\/p>\n

Pablo Da Silva found Perera for the Stars’ next marker with 9:39 showing on the clock. McCluskey shot a pass to Chase Hanson, who launched it in the net for an 8-0 lead. Perera notched the hat trick on the first of two Lamar Neagle assists to give the Stars a 9-0 lead after two quarters.<\/p>\n

McCluskey and Perera goals less than a minute apart padded the lead to 11-0 with 11:01 to play in the third.<\/p>\n

Turlock finally found its way onto the scoreboard 26 seconds later when Douglas Lima took advantage of a shootout opportunity following a Cory Keitz blue card. Lima scored again with 8:37 to go and later found Joaquin Raya for a goal.<\/p>\n

Neagle, who had three assists in the game, scored his first goal of the season on a Waltman assist with 12:52 left to play. Nineteen seconds later, McCluskey completed his hat trick – off a Troy Peterson assist – for a 13-3 lead.<\/p>\n

Express veteran Arturo Pulido launched Turlock’s final goal of the season with 9:57 showing on the clock.<\/p>\n

With 1:39 left Antoniuk wrapped up the scoring on a Neagle assist.<\/p>\n

Tacoma swept the season series 5-0.<\/p>\n

SCORING SUMMARY<\/strong><\/p>\n

First quarter –<\/strong> TAC, Perera (Ramos) 3:53; TAC, Ramos (Perera) 5:55; TAC, McCluskey (Antoniuk); TAC, Cairel (Ramos); Penalties – none.<\/p>\n

Second quarter –<\/strong> TAC, McCluskey (Waltman) 2:56; TAC, Cairel (Ramos) 3:59; TAC, Perera (Da Silva) 5:21 TAC, Hanson (McCluskey) 9:39; TAC, Perera (Neagle) 11:46; Penalties – none.<\/p>\n

Third quarter – <\/strong>TAC, Antoniuk (Gjertsen) 2:22; TAC, Perera (Neagle) 3:20; TUR, Lima 3:46 shoot-out; TUR, Lima 6:23; TUR, Raya (Lima) 12:24; Penalties – TAC, Keitz blue card (deny goal scoring chance) 3:46.<\/p>\n

Fourth quarter –<\/strong> TAC, Neagle (Waltman) 2:08; TAC, McCluskey (Peterson) 2:27; TUR, Pulido 5:03; TAC, Antoniuk (Neagle) 13:21; Penalties – TAC, Peterson blue card (deny goal scoring chance) 6:09.<\/p>\n

Shots –<\/strong> Tacoma 6-6-2-3 (17), Turlock 4-2-6-2 (14)<\/p>\n

First quarter – <\/strong>490<\/p>\n

To order tickets and to follow the Stars, visit tacomastars.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Club blows out Express 14-4 to finish regular season <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":40090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-40089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40089"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=40089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}